Northern Ireland Protocol

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

The Foreign Secretary must be alarmed at the comments that emerged this morning from the chairman of Marks & Spencer. He has already had to close his business in France. His business in the Republic of Ireland is about to close—[Interruption.] Oh, he is a Conservative; therefore, he should not be doing business—that seems to be the Liberal view emerging. To export goods, his business in the Republic of Ireland has to fill in 700 pages within an eight-hour period. It has to do some of the wording in Latin to satisfy the European Community, and it also has to be typed in a certain font or it will not be allowed. It costs him an additional £30 million. He said on the radio this morning that the EU told him that it would like the same procedures for his businesses in Northern Ireland. This is a power grab. People talk about a trade war—this is a trade war to crush business in Northern Ireland. Will the Foreign Secretary ensure, when she is speaking to the Cabinet, that it knows clearly that if it keeps the protocol, power sharing is not coming back?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have been very clear in my statement that we are bringing forward legislation to sort this issue out and to deal with the bureaucracy that we are seeing—the requirement for customs declarations and customs codes from businesses that are simply operating within the United Kingdom. That is why we want to create the green lane that allows properly protected goods to move freely within the United Kingdom, and we are committed to that legislation. In the meantime, if the EU is prepared, in parallel, to move to a negotiated settlement to resolve the very issues that the hon. Gentleman raises, we are of course open to those talks, but we will not allow it to delay our taking the action we need to take to restore the primacy of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.